One Week
by Harpokrates
Summary: A week of healing, doctor's orders. If only the doctor could cook and prevent introspective angsting. Rated for language.


Death at the hands of the Copy-nin would have been preferable to a week of Haku's cooking.

Talented, sure. Deadly, certainly. Loyal, to the death. But Haku had lived most of his life stealing from dumpsters and the bit of his life before that as a boy in a clan household, and had a mother to make him food, and the bit of his life after that eating ration bars. Cooking food was not the boy's forte, but Zabuza was too paranoid to accept food made by anyone else and too injured to make his own. Haku's dinners may have tasted like charcoal and dysentery, but Zabuza could trust the boy to not poison him.

Much.

At least the poisoning was unintentional and Haku had apologized profusely after Zabuza had finished puking up the contents of his stomach into a bowl that the boy had held for him. He was somewhat less concerned with Haku panicking and running for medicine and more so with the fact that he knew he hadn't eaten eel since he'd gone rouge.

But there it was.

Looking at him.

Zabuza sighed and wiped his mouth, standing up. His movements were still jerky and uncertain after Haku (lovingly) threw a couple of needles through his throat, but he managed to walk over to the window (which he hated because they were such an obvious security flaw and how had Gatou not been assassinated yet?) and toss the bowl out of it, eel puke and all. The shrieks of indignation that he hoped came from Gatou's dickish ronin resounded throughout the room, and he sat heavily on the bed, the muscles in his thighs twitching spasmodically. A week into their employment with Gatou, one of the ronin had tried to grope Haku, mistaking him for a woman. Haku had, of course, reacted appropriately and snapped the man's arm.

If Zabuza had had his way, the man would have been tortured to death, then cut into pieces and fed to his friends and relatives. Gatou had forbidden him from murdering any of the people working under him, which was another reason to hate the man, besides oppressing a country, cutting off needed supplies and sending his gang of thugs to threaten and kill random civilians. Needless to say he was still angry and seeing any of the ronin suffer was pleasing.

Yawning, he realized vaguely that his mouth tasted like vomit and Haku's cooking. So, vomit squared. He groaned and stood up again, shuffling towards the small washroom. He reached for his toothbrush, fumbling around until he grabbed it and ignoring the crashing that was probably Haku's collection of fancy soaps he stole from the other spare rooms at Gatou's hideout. After liberally applying toothpaste to the bristles, he proceeded to scrub the fuck out of his teeth. He grinned into the mirror, displaying his vicious pointed teeth and less vicious Foamy Blue Bubblegum toothpaste. There was a reason he didn't let Haku do the shopping anymore.

He spat into the sink, wiping the Foamy Blue Bubblegum remnants off of his mouth. He pulled his upper lip towards his nose and poked his teeth. They were getting dull; he would have to sharpen them soon. He briefly considered telling Haku to sharpen his teeth too, that way they could match, but then thought of the wispy, effeminate boy with a mouth full of teeth only a deranged shark mother could love.

Even Hoshigaki Mako thought the sharpened teeth were weird, and Zabuza was fairly certain that the terrifying giant shark lady that had popped out Kisame was a few degrees crazier than most other jounin. Besides, the Lady Hoshigaki had never liked Haku, sharpened teeth or not. He couldn't remember much from the time he turned eighteen to the time he tried to kill the Mizukage -too many wild mist-nin parties would do that to a man- but he distinctly recalled her asking Kisame if Haku was meant to be lunch the few times he coerced the other swordsman into babysitting. Then she called him girly and tried to get him to bench 250 in an attempt to 'man him up so the little runt won't look like my dinner' Afterwards, Zabuza decided that Haku was old enough to stay at home alone, which greatly reduced the number of shark-based threats on his life.

He was infinitely glad he never went to her for parenting advice.

He dragged himself back to bed, not panting at all from the exertion, because he was a manly man and manly men didn't let little things like foot long needles thrown through their throats slow them down.

A crashing at the door and the screams of several henchmen resounded throughout the room. Haku was back.

The door slammed open, leaving a lovely doorknob-shaped hole in the wall. Zabuza thought he could see two terrified ronin frozen during a game of slap jack through it before they ran for cover.

Haku stepped in and pulled a mason jar of fluorescent green goop from his basket. Kicking the door shut (and leaving a few more dents in the door frame), he dragged a chair over to Zabuza's bed and sat down.

"Zabuza-sama, I have brought medicine." Haku did that thing that he did that made it seem like he was smiling even though Zabuza couldn't see his face behind the mask, and handed the jar to him.

He grunted in reply and took the jar. Haku might not have been able to tell the difference between cooked and a slab of raw bloody meat, but he was a hunter-nin, and could dance his way around the human body like Zabuza could a sword kata. If he gave Zabuza medicine that he said would work, Zabuza would take it. It was both a testament to his trust and a sign that he relied too much in his tool.

"So," He muttered after choking the concoction down. "why do Gatou's hordes run screaming whenever you're around?"

Haku pulled off the mask and took the jar. "I have done nothing that would be considered immoral by you." He sounded terse.

Zabuza leveled a stare at him. "I killed my entire graduating class and attempted to kill the Mizukage in a failed coup d'etat."

"Yes, Zabuza-sama"

Zabuza sat up on his elbow. "Brat, tell me you didn't kill anyone. I couldn't care less, but Gatou threatened he would alert the Third to our location if we killed any of his ronin."

Haku huffed a little. "I have not killed anyone."

"Goddamn, kid, I-just. Look, I'm not in the mood to play 'let Zabuza-sama ask questions until I stop being a bitch and answer him'. Tell me what you did."

Haku wilted a little at his tone. "Gatou's men were being obscene and saying vulgar things about Zabuza-sama." His voice had gone flat, which meant he was hideously embarrassed about what he said and just wanted to fume alone where no one could bother him. "I broke the ringleader's wrist and threatened him with his sword."

Zabuza took this to mean he'd probably dashed and grabbed the man's sword and also maybe used the ice mirrors.

Haku looked down, clearly ashamed. "I apologize, Zabuza-sama." His voice was barely above a whisper. "I have fail-"

"Look," Zabuza cut him off. "you don't need to apologize to me, just don't do anything that stupid again."

"Seriously, Zabuza-sama, you really need to-"

Zabuza threw a pillow at his head. It hit his face with a 'paft' and fell to the floor at his feet.

Haku only looked a little offended.

Zabuza rolled over.

"So, brat, did Gauto find out?"

"Yes, Zabuza-sama."

"Did he issue a punishment?" Trying to get a straight answer out of Haku was like pulling teeth. While his evasiveness was good for interrogations, it was crap when Zabuza was trying to get Haku to tell him about his day.

"Yes, Zabuza-sama."

"What?" The exasperation was starting to leak through into his voice.

"Well, I have to-"

It was at this point that Zabuza got the same sense of foreboding that he always got when Kisame came over once a month or so and they did manly things like drink and play poker and lament their equally girly sidekicks. Last time it happened, though, Haku talked with that Weasel guy about hair tips, then the Weasel beat them both at poker, and Haku drank them all under the table. The next morning, Zabuza woke up next to Kisame with a distinctly fishy taste in his mouth. They both vowed never to speak of it again. Come to think of it, that was also the first time Haku had cooked for him. At the time, Zabuza had simply attributed the terrible taste to the fact that he was deeply hung over, but he was soon proven wrong on that account.

"-ook."

Oh, shit, Haku was saying something.

"What?"

Haku gave him a look.

"I said, Zabuza-sama, that I had to cook for the week, while the actual cook's hand heals."

There were many words Zabuza could have used in a situation like this. For convenience's sake, he combined them into a single word to properly express his emotions.

"Fushidakasdicbafunm." He babbled incoherently.

Maybe he could go back to Mist and apologize to the Mizukage. Prisons had food, didn't they?

-END-


End file.
